Lucas Camilo

We’ve mentioned Lucas’s primary passion — dinosaurs — quite a bit on this blog.  But you may not know that he loves music almost as much as prehistoric creatures.  Lucas loves listening to music at home, and he constantly calls out the playlist when we’re in the van.  (If you wonder why our most current music knowledge is the release date of the new Casper Babypants album , it’s because Lucas hogs the stereo.)  And for two years we took him to Music Together classes with a fabulous local teacher.  We’d sit in a circle with kids mostly younger than Lucas and sing songs (parents sang, kids did whatever they wanted), dance around like trains, pull imaginary persimmons out of our pockets, and bang away at instruments.  Lucas loved it, and he’d sing all the songs at home, though at music class he was usually quiet.

He had sort of aged out of Music Together a while ago, but we kept going until kindergarten made it impossible to go.  And then I saw a little sign up for a family community choir.  I thought Lucas would love it, though I worried that all the extra noise we bring (suction and vent can be quite loud, especially when everything else is quiet) could be awkward.  So I wrote to the choir director and asked if the choir could handle some unusually loud machine noise, and she said “no problem!”

So Lucas and I (and Burke when he can make it) joined the choir.  And its awesome.  There are usually just five or six families with their kids sitting around singing folk songs, or sometimes pop songs — last week one of the older girls requested a song that is apparently on the radio all the time (like I said, I know nothing beyond Casper.)  And we sang True Colors, Cyndi Lauper’s super hit from the 80’s.  The choir director is musically amazing.  She gets the group, most of whom have limited musical experience or talent, to sing some pretty complicated rounds.  And she is so welcoming to Lucas, making time and space for him and his unique sounds, and celebrating when she notices he’s singing.  Or even trying to sing.

The fact that he’s trying to sing along is the amazing thing.  Lucas can be shy when he’s not among friends or family.  For example, during the first few weeks of kindergarten he supposedly only said a few words.  In two years of music class, even when he knew every word to a song, he almost never sang in class.  And this all makes sense to me.  He knows people have trouble understanding him.  He has a quiet voice when he’s sitting up.  He can feel shy, but physically has no way to move himself away, so not speaking or singing is his only way of shrinking away.

But on the very first day of choir, he sang along to This Land Is Your Land.  Then he listened for the rest of the hour, but I was still beaming with pride.  The next week he sang along to two songs.  And then last week we did a call-and-response song that went around the whole circle.  We had done it before and I’d sung Lucas’s part for him.  This time I kept whispering in his ear “are you going to sing?”  (I actually dread this song because the key is hard and I sound terrible when I sing my solo response part.)  The whole choir sings “Hey Krista,” and then I have to sing back “I think I hear my name.”  And then that repeats, and then one more line where you “pass” the song on to someone else.  Well.  We were going around the circle, and then the person next to Lucas went.  And then the whole choir sang “Hey Lucas.”  There was a pause.  And then his tiny, sweet, so-absolutely-unique voice sang back out “I think I hear my name.”  My heart exploded I was so proud of him!

When he passed the song on to me, I couldn’t help but laugh at myself.  If Lucas can do it — with the physical challenge of simply making sound around a trach, and knowing he sounds different than everyone else, and being a shy kid — I certainly can get over my hang ups about my less than perfect pitch!  I mean, I’m still not planning on taking over the Seattle karaoke scene, but I felt so bolstered by Lucas’s bravery.